这些人永远都是这样。You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

这些群众运动都会被这些人导向他们需要的结果。

这么明显的事实，绝大多数人还不明白。

就目前的状况，如果要想一个社会有变化，就是不搭理那些政客，不随着他们的指挥棒起舞。

表扬老朋友k19, 绝大多数人都不会花精力和时间去仔细看任何事情，我一直比较支持你，就是因为你很有好奇心，

想知道事情的真相。绝大多数人根本不想知道事情的真相，都是依靠平时学校和媒体灌输的垃圾。

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rahm_emanuel_409199

Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989: What really happened?

William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages. He has lectured as Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and delivers talks and private seminars around the world on subjects of current importance from economics to oil geopolitics to agribusiness. A widely discussed analyst of current political and economic developments, his provocative articles and analyses have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines and well-known international websites. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal and member of the editorial board of Eurasia magazine. Based in Frankfurt, Germany he may be reached via his website www.williamengdahl.com

This week marks twenty five years since the world was told of a brutal massacre by the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army of “thousands” of peacefully protesting pro-democracy students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The response from the West then was to demonize the Chinese government and to impose economic and military sanctions which in many cases exist to the present day. A recent release of a diplomatic telegram from then-US Ambassador to China, James E. Lilley, to Washington sheds new light on what really happened that June 4.

According to the mainstream Western version of events, thousands of Chinese university students began their sit-in protest demanding democracy and transparency from the Communist government in April and into May 1989 in the huge Tiananmen Square, directly across from the historic Forbidden City edifice in central Beijing. They defiantly faced off against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army. On May 20, 1989, the CCP imposed martial law and ordered truckloads of soldiers to Beijing to take back the square from protesters. The Western account has it that then, on June 3 into June 4, PLA soldiers opened fire and killed “up to 1000 student protesters.”

Sensational eyewitness account

WikiLeaks, the website that received hundreds of thousands of pages of intercepted diplomatic correspondence from the US State Department, has released a classified diplomatic cable from then-Beijing Ambassador James Lilley to Washington dated July 12, 1989 more than four weeks after the events. In his report, Lilley writes the following shocking version of events:

OF JUNE 3-4 EVENTS ON TIANANMEN SQUARE

1. CONFIDENTIAL - ENTIRE TEXT.

2. SUMMARY- DURING A RECENT MEETING, A LATIN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT AND HIS WIFE PROVIDED POLOFF AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR MOVEMENTS ON JUNE 3-4 AND THEIR EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF EVENTS AT TIANANMEN SQUARE. ALTHOUGH THEIR ACCOUNT GENERALLY FOLLOWS THOSE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, THEIR UNIQUE EXPERIENCES PROVIDE ADDITIONAL INSIGHT AND CORROBORATION OF EVENTS IN THE SQUARE. THEY WERE ABLE TO ENTER AND LEAVE THE SQUARE SEVERAL TIMES AND WERE NOT HARASSED BY TROOPS. REMAINING WITH STUDENTS BY THE MONUMENT TO THE PEOPLE'S HEROES UNTIL THE FINAL WITHDRAWAL, THE DIPLOMAT SAID THERE WERE NO MASS SHOOTINGS OF STUDENTS IN THE SQUARE OR AT THE MONUMENT. END SUMMARY. (Emphasis mine - WE)

Lilley in his memo goes on to name the Latin American couple as Chilean Second Secretary Carlos Gallo and his wife. They had been dining near the square and went to observe events. As foreign diplomats, they managed to move in the crowd without difficulty. They said the PLA had evidently been ordered not to interfere with foreigners. They reported hearing shots and wounded students were brought to a Red Cross tent for care. Then the US Ambassador reported,

8. GALLO EVENTUALLY ENDED UP AT THE RED CROSS STATION, AGAIN HOPING THAT TROOPS WOULD NOT FIRE ON THE MEDICAL PERSONNEL THERE. HE WATCHED THE MILITARY ENTER THE SQUARE AND DID NOT OBSERVE ANY MASS FIRING OF WEAPONS INTO THE CROWDS, ALTHOUGH SPORADIC GUNFIRE WAS HEARD. HE SAID THAT MOST OF THE TROOPS WHICH ENTERED THE SQUARE WERE ACTUALLY ARMED ONLY WITH ANTI-RIOT GEAR--TRUNCHEONS AND WOODEN CLUBS… (Emphasis added - WE)

Then Gallo reports in a subsequent meeting with the US Embassy’s political officer a most remarkable development which was entirely blocked out of sensational Western media. The student leaders and the PLA reached an agreement that the protestors would be allowed to leave peacefully if they disbanded their sit-in:

10. ALTHOUGH GUNFIRE COULD BE HEARD, GALLO SAID THAT APART FROM SOME BEATING OF STUDENTS, THERE WAS NO MASS FIRING INTO THE CROWD OF STUDENTS AT THE MONUMENT. WHEN POLOFF MENTIONED SOME REPORTEDLY EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF MASSACRES AT THE MONUMENT WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, GALLO SAID THAT THERE WAS NO SUCH SLAUGHTER. ONCE AGREEMENT WAS REACHED FOR THE STUDENTS TO WITHDRAW, LINKING HANDS TO FORM A COLUMN, THE STUDENTS LEFT THE SQUARE THROUGH THE SOUTHEAST CORNER. ESSENTIALLY EVERYONE, INCLUDING GALLO, LEFT. THE FEW THAT ATTEMPTED TO REMAIN BEHIND WERE BEATEN AND DRIVEN TO JOIN THE END OF THE DEPARTING PROCESSION. ONCE OUTSIDE THE SQUARE, THE STUDENTS HEADED WEST ON QIANMEN DAJIE WHILE GALLO HEADED EAST TO HIS CAR. (Emphasis mine - WE)

The report of a deal between student protestors and the military to end the protest peacefully and leave had been told to me by various young Chinese in personal accounts on recent visits to Beijing, but until this WikiLeaks release of the Lilley cable, it could never be confirmed. Now it seems clear that the entire story of “thousands” of dead students at Tiananmen Square, whose very name in the West is synonymous with brutal government suppression of democracy, was largely a fabrication. The protests were real, but not the horrendous stories of slaughter.

Indeed, as I have written elsewhere, there is rather strong circumstantial evidence that suggests that the CIA and US State Department played a key role in trying to goad on the student protestors at Tiananmen Square; much like the CIA did in Hungary in 1956, in order to provoke a government bloodbath of repression. Around the same time as Tiananmen protests in April-June 1989, the Chinese government banned a Chinese NGO of US operator George Soros, the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China, after interrogating its Chinese director in August 1989 and claiming that the Soros China fund had links to the CIA. The Soros Fund according to Chinese reports had been supported by ousted Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang.

Significantly in addition to the Soros Fund, Gene Sharp of the Cambridge Massachusetts Albert Einstein Institution, whose handbooks on “non-violence as a method of warfare” have been the “how-to” textbook for every color revolution to date, was in Beijing days before the Tiananmen events. Then-US Ambassador Lilley himself was a career CIA officer who, like then-President George H.W. Bush, had been in the secretive Yale Skull & Bones society, and who was with Bush at the CIA. The circumstantial evidence points to an attempted US destabilization of China designed to coincide with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, with Lilley the likely on-the-ground coordinator.

When the PLA failed to fill Beijing with the blood of “thousands” of student democracy martyrs, Washington could simply go with fabrication of a fantasy or virtual massacre and, because of its overwhelming control of mainstream media; most of the world could believe the Washington version.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

His words drew attention everywhere. That February, Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian were invited to attend a state bangquet hosted by the visiting President George H. W. Bush but were brutally stopped near the party by a swarm of police.

As the 1989 student movement was ignited after Hu Yaobang's death, Fang Lizhi chose to stay behind the scenes so that he would not bring unwanted attention or trouble to the movement. Earlier on, he did provide private advices to a few student leaders such as Liu Gang and Wang Dan but refused invitations to make public speeches. Later, he expressed his displeasure of the aggressive tactics in the movement:

Once the hunger strike started, the movement went out of control, and I suspected that the government would use military means to end it. These students just did not understand. They grew up in the generation after the Cultural Revolution and had never seen the Party kill people on a large scale. The students loved that line in L'Intenernationale about this being the final struggle, but I told those who came to my home that this was most definitely not the final struggle. They felt that if they just carried this struggle through, they would be victorious. I didn't think so.

Nevertheless, Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian were publicly labeled as the "black hands" of the movement by the government. On May 31, several small-scale rallies organized by the government sprang up in the Beijing suburbs, in which "angry peasants" burned effigies of Fang Lizhi's likeness.

By then, Fang Lizhi already found himself followed when he left Beijing for an academic conference. Within hours after the massacre on June 3, he contacted the American Embassy through their American friend Perry Link and eventually gained protection there.

China and independent travel

I googled and found a personal letter* written by senior Bush to Deng Xiaoping, the then Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party and the state:

June 20, 1989 [about a fortnight after the Tiananmen Massacre]

His Excellency Deng Xiaoping
People’s Republic of China
Beijing

Dear Chairman Deng:

I write this letter to you with a heavy heart. I wish there was a way to discuss this matter in person, but regrettably that is not the case. First I write in a spirit of genuine friendship, this letter coming as I’m sure you know from one who believes with a passion that good relations between the United States and China are in the fundamental interests of both countries. I have felt that way for many years. I feel more strongly that way today, in spite of the difficult circumstances.

Secondly, I write as one who has great respect for what you personally have done for the people of China and to help your great country move forward. There is enormous irony in the fact that you who yourself has suffered several reversals in your quest to bring reform and openness to China are now facing a situation fraught with so much danger and so much anxiety.

I recall your telling me the last time we met that you were in essence phasing our of the day-to-day management of your great country. But I also recall your unforgettable words about the need for good relations with the West, your concerns about "Encirclement" and those who had done great harm to China, and your commitment to keep China moving forward. By writing you I am not trying to bypass any individual leader of China. I am simply writing as a friend, a genuine "lao pengyou".

It is with this in mind that I write you asking for your help in preserving this relationship that we both think is very important. I have tried very hard not to inject myself into China’s internal affairs. I have tried very hard not to appear to be dictating in any way to China about how it should manage its internal crisis. I am respectful of the difference in our societies and in our two systems.

I have great reverence for Chinese history, culture and tradition. You have given much to the development of world civilization. But I ask you as well to remember the principles on which my young country was founded. Those principles are democracy and freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of assemblage, freedom from arbitrary authority. It is reverence for those principles which inevitably affects the way Americans view and react to events in other countries. It is not a reaction of arrogance or of a desire to force others to our beliefs but of a simple faith in the enduring value of those principles and their universal applicability.

And that leads directly to the fundamental problem. The early days of the student demonstrations, and indeed, the early treatment of the students by the Chinese Army, captured the imagination of the entire world. The wonder of TV brought the details of the events in Tiananmen Square into the homes of people not just in "Western" countries but world-wide. The early tolerance that was shown, the restraint and the generous handling of the demonstrations won world-wide respect for China’s leadership. Thoughtful people all over the world tried to understand and sympathize with the enormous problems being faced by those required to keep order; and, indeed, they saw with administration the manifestation of policy which reflected the leaders’ words: "The Army loves the people." The world cheered when the Chinese leaders were seen patiently meeting with students, even though there were "sit-ins" and even though disorder did interfere with normal functions.

I will leave what followed to the history books, but again, with their own eyes the people of the world saw the turmoil and the bloodshed with which the demonstrations were ended. Various countries reacted in various ways. Based on the principles I described above, the actions I took as President of the United States could not be avoided. As you know, the clamor for stronger action remains intense. I have resisted that clamor, making clear that I did not want to see this relationship that you and I have worked hard to build. I explained to the American people that I did not want to unfairly burden the Chinese people through economic sanctions.

There is also the matter of Fang Lizhi. The minute I heard Fang was in our Embassy, I knew there would be a high profiled wedge driven between us. Fang was not encouraged to come to our Embassy, but under our widely accepted interpretation of international law, we could not refuse him admittance.

In today’s climate I know this matter is of grave importance to you and I know it presents you with an enormous problem; a problem that adversely affects my determination and, hopefully, yours to get our relationship back on track.

We cannot now put Fang out of the Embassy without some assurance that he will not be in physical danger. Similar cases elsewhere in the world have been resolved over long periods of time or through the government quietly permitting departure or through expulsion. I simply want to assure you that we want this difficult matter resolved in a way which is both satisfactory to you and does not violate our commitment to our basic principles. When there are difficulties between friends, as now, we must find a way to talk them out.

Your able Ambassador here represents your country firmly and faithfully. I feel that Jim Lilley does the same for us; but if there is some special channel that you would favor, please let me know.

I have thought of asking you to receive a special emissary who could speak with total candor to you representing my heartfelt convictions on these matters. If you feel such an emissary could be helpful, please let me know and we will work cooperatively to see that his mission is kept in total confidence. I have insisted that all departments of the US Government be guided in their statements and actions from my guidance in the White House. Sometimes in an open system such as ours it is impossible to control all leaks, but on this particular letter there are no copies, no one, outside of my own personal file.

I send you this letter with great respect and deep concern. We must not let this important relationship suffer further. Please help me keep it strong. Any statement that could be made from China that drew upon the earlier statements about peacefully resolving further disputes with protesters would be very well received here. Any clemency that could be shown the student demonstrators would be applauded worldwide. We must not let the aftermath of the tragic events undermine a vital relationship patiently built up over the past seventeen years. I would of course welcome a personal reply to this letter. This matter is too important to be left to our bureaucracies.

As I said above, I write with a heavy heart; but I also write with a frankness reserved for respected friends.

Sincerely,
George Bush

*The letter was hosted at the website of Georgia Institute of Technology and is now only accessible via Google’s cache.